Inbetween storms

It looks beautiful now. But looks can be deceiving! The other day we had 4' waves crashing on the docks. That's life in a boat in a storm.

We've had so much water coming down from the Delta flooding the San Francisco Bay. Water, mud, debris, and water hyacinth! It's funny to see clumps of plants hanging around our boat!

This morning in the shower, because that's where all my brilliant ideas come to me, I wondered if you can knit with the reeds floating in the water. They should be pliable since they've been floating the water for quite a while. And I have plenty of reeds around me so I would have enough materials.

My Faithful Sherpa thinks it's a sickness. "Babe, you don't have to create something out of all the junk you find. You can just leave it!"

What, leave perfectly good material sitting around, or floating in the water. I can't do that. It's sacrilegious!

So as soon as I was out of the shower, I quickly dressed, ran outside and knelt down in the dock and started picking up the reeds in the water.

"What are you doing?"
Um...me...nothing...
"Oh, it's fiber? Are you thinking of knitting with it?"

He knows me too well! It turns out the reeds are too thick and don't bend, but snap.
"Plus they would have stunk up the car or the house when you hang your finished piece!"
But I had to try. There's too many reeds around me to let them go to waste! But unfortunately I'm going to have to abandon that idea...for now.

Its amazing, though, what you find floating in the water. If I haven't bent down to pull reeds out of the water, I would have missed this sweet little flower.

The sun is out right now so we sat in the cockpit of the boat in hopes of baking this cold out of us! My Faithful Sherpa was sweet to offer to help me wind some wool I'll be using for a custom lace shawl. Typically, if I don't have my ball winder, I'll use my legs. It's such a very unladylike way of sitting but sometimes you just do what you have to do for knitting!